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Mobile Goes Global: How to keep pace

Wednesday, December 12 2012 @ 12:35 PM, By Maxwell Hoffmann

Did you know that more people on the planet use mobile phones than toothbrushes? Did you know that there are 5x as many cellphones on the planet as there are PCs? In 2013 mobile devices will overtake PCs as the most common means of access to the Web.

Val Swisher of Content Rules delivered a revealing and dynamic webinar on this topic. You may view our recording of this AdobeTCS sponsored event by clicking here.

A simple strategy: TOAST

Val has coined a new acronym for a global mobile strategy, TOAST, which stands for:

Targeting

Objectives

Action

Strategies

Technologies

There is a tremendous amount of background data to support each of these steps; you must view the recording link listed above to capture the full picture. As an example, the following bullet points highlight just a few of the issues under “Targeting”:

Who are we trying to target?

How will they access the information we provide?

How do we expect them to use the information provided?

What’s the flow of work and/or tasks the information will support?

What devices will be used?

What kind of network will be available?

A key to your solution: Responsive Design

Val made clear that a major objective is being able to produce mobile content that is “responsive” and “device” aware. She refers to this as “responsive design”, which is highlighted in one of her slides below:

The move to mobile is inevitable: find the right tools

Once viewing the recording of our webinar with Val, it will be patently obvious that any global strategy must include global mobile content. While evaluating the best set of content creation tools for responsive design, you should give serious consideration to Adobe’s Technical Communication Suite 4, which enables you to author from either FrameMaker 11 or RoboHelp 10 and publish to multiscreen HTML. This solution includes a media query feature that matches responsive design.

The quickest way to do this is to have use a trial copy of Tech Comm Suite 4, which includes FrameMaker 11 and RoboHelp 10. You can try your own hands-on by clicking here. This link also includes a link to a Quick Start Guide for RoboHelp.